File maintenance utility processing

The file maintenance utility needs to know the fully-qualified data set name of the control file of the CICS® region for which it is processing file maintenance commands. This is so that the utility can allocate and access the appropriate control file in the event that CICS BAC is not active in the owning CICS region. In the normal course of events, the file maintenance utility reads and updates the control file through the CICS BAC request server task in the CICS region. For each CICS region, the corresponding control file data set name is held in the control file table, defined in a partitioned data set member named CBKCFTBL, as described in The control file table. Thus, to access CICS BAC control file for the CICS region for which it is processing commands, the file maintenance utility needs one of the following:

• The applid of the CICS region so that it can look up the data set name in the CBKCFTBL table. With this information, the file maintenance utility can dynamically allocate the CICS region control file to the job if CICS BAC is not active in the CICS region.
• The fully qualified data set name of the CICS BAC control file for the region. With this information, the file maintenance utility can look up the CICS applid in the CBKCFTBL table, and can then communicate with the CICS region to determine whether CICS BAC is active in the region

You provide this information in the file maintenance utility JCL; see Figure 1.

The following is a brief outline of the processing steps performed by the file maintenance utility:

Check for runtime parameters

The utility performs PARM string processing, checking for runtime parameters that can override the file maintenance utility program defaults.

Check for control file DD statement

As described in the previous step, if you do not provide an APPLID runtime parameter, the utility needs the fully qualified data set name of the CICS BAC control file.

Read commands from the input data set

If the runtime parameters are valid, the utility opens the CBKIN data set containing file maintenance commands and performs syntax checks on the commands.

Process valid commands

If the commands are valid and there are no syntax errors, the utility processes the commands sequentially. As each command is processed, the return code is checked against the maximum return code for that command and if it is less than, or equal to, the maximum return code value for the command, processing continues with the next command; otherwise processing is terminated. Any successful file activity up to the point of termination is preserved.

Print report

On completion of all command processing, the file maintenance utility produces a report.